


Greeting the Monster in our Easter Dresses

by dedougal



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 20:41:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1524866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dedougal/pseuds/dedougal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hell has a landscape sometimes. Meg learns to be adept at navigating it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Greeting the Monster in our Easter Dresses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smalltrolven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smalltrolven/gifts).



> Written for smalltrolven for the SPN SpringFling challenge. I love this challenge because I always write something unexpected and this is absolutely no exception. Thank you to the mods and thank you to my wonderful prompter.

Hell sometimes had a landscape. It was something Meg had taken time to become accustomed to after being cut free from the rack and allowed to wander. She hadn’t fallen like the strongest of the inhabitants, but stumbled her own way into hell, unable to escape her fate. Hell might not have always been her destiny but she’d chosen to make it her place without thinking through the consequences.

Hell’s landscape changed and flowed and melted, from one nightmare of flesh to another, eyes blinking their way sleepily into being beneath her feet, mouths filled with too many teeth snapping at skin that didn’t really exist. It had driven Meg back to the rack, to the place she knew. She took the knife Alistair handed her and cut to slice control into the uncontrollable.

She had almost forgotten the twisted landscape when she was summoned. Alistair grinned widely – his mouth sometimes twisted so half his head split and every tooth was on display – and shooed her away. It made her laugh, a little. No one had shown up with a letter or called her name or anything as mundane as that. Instead she felt an indescribable urge to set down her blade and start a journey over the treacherous meat of Hell.

No one, no demon, talked to another. There were noises: the scream of the ever present wind, the groans from the grove of suicides, the metallic crank of the rank and the smash of blade on bone. Undercutting it all was the slow, incessant drip drip drip of blood. There was also a new sound, as Meg strode out across the shifting, heaving ground. One she had never heard before. The rattle of cage bars. She was closer the sink hole center of Hell than she’d ever been before.

Suddenly, incongruously, there was a castle. It was made of clean, square cut blocks, near white in the red. Banners fluttered from battlements, a simple silver device on black. It screamed, though, setting her imagined teeth on edge. Iron gates hung open but no one entered and no one left while Meg watched. She couldn’t disobey the pull, low in her gut, as if she were a fish on a hook.

The arched, glorious room bore no resemblance to the outside of the castle, another reminder that Hell’s landscape was never fixed, never quite right. There was no logic, no order here, for all that there were rules. The Crossroads demons, the ones who actively sought souls rather than looking for happenstance, had all kinds of rules. Rules made Meg shiver.

“How goes your education, child?” The voice came out of the shadows, contained cruelty and the rasp of insects’ innumerable legs. Meg could feel the power in it and she wasn’t sure how to answer.

A flash of yellow lightening in the darkness and then two figures walked towards her. “Well?” It was a different voice from before. This one was full of razor sharp smiles. 

Meg shrugged and stood her ground. “Fine.”

“I hear it’s more than fine.” The first voice again. It came from a figure that was slowly coalescing into that of a woman, dress shifting between silk and carapace. The demon’s lips were painted red and Meg wondered whether they’d taste of blood. “I hear that Alistair is happy with his little apprentice.”

“He’s had hundreds of apprentices-“ The other voice had become a man, grinning easily, eyes a sick yellow.

“But he normally eats them by now.” The woman was closer all of a sudden. She smelled of ruin, rot and over-ripe roses. Meg swayed closer. “I like you.”

“She’ll do,” the yellow eyed demon sneered. “She seems capable.”

“She has potential, as well.” The woman leaned closer, pressed her cheek to Meg’s and smiled.

 

Meg collected secrets. What people had given up to be here, what that rattle of chains really was. How to do things that shouldn’t be possible. She had teachers, sure enough, but she also had eyes and ears and a brain that ticked over constantly. She learned secrets of souls, of controls and of buttons to push. She learned all the rules and she learned how best to break them.

Alistair handed over his favorite paring knife the last time she visited him.

“I hear they want you to crawl out of here.” Alistair plucked out a rib and gnawed on it, absently, before offering it over. Meg shook her head.

“Brave new world, I hear. They have a gate I can pass through now.” Meg shrugged. She knew exactly how long it had taken to build, the constant labors through centuries. She didn’t have to pass on all her secrets.

“The old ways will always be there, you know.” Alistair’s grin didn’t reveal all his teeth this time. “To send you back as well as let you out.” It was a warning but Meg knew it wasn’t needed. She knew better than to tangle with hunters. There was plenty for her to be setting in place without them.

 

Abaddon the Destroyer waited for her at the gate, her hand resting against one of the mighty carved pillars. Then she shifted and became Abaddon, Meg’s teacher, once more. “You know what we need,” she said. “But it’s more than a task. You’re going to change the world.” Her hand tugged Meg close, drew along her jawline. “You’re going to be flesh and more-than-flesh.” Abaddon’s voice sounded dreamy.

 

Meg soon came to know what she meant. She spent a giddy decade, slipping from body to body, making pure profane and recognizing what a dull reflection of this world Hell truly was. The ground stayed firm, unless she commanded it to move, and mountains fixed in place and seas rolled to a scheduled tide. It made it easy to turn good men to evil, to make self-interest more promising than morality.

She watched her latest scheme come to fruition, eating an unnecessary apple, when Abaddon sat down beside her. She was neat in an old-fashioned dress, hair pinned up in a way that Meg just wanted to wreck. Meg’s latest body was a whipcord lean brunette who wore pants and leather vests. Beside her, Abaddon looked as fussy as the girls she’d set to fighting among themselves.

“You didn’t need to do that. It was a waste of your skills.” Abaddon folded her hands in her lap.

Meg leaned back against the porch steps, sprawled out casually. “I think of it as no rest for the wicked.”

“You like it here.” Abaddon’s lips pursed in a moue, although she was as impossible to read as ever.

Meg bit into her apple. There was no answer she could give that would be acceptable. Abaddon could send her back to hell, back to her place on Alistair’s rack or even forever forbid her Hell.

Abaddon grabbed at her wrist, supernaturally strong, crushing the delicate bones. She leaned close, a dark curl of possessiveness unfurling from her lips. Meg opened her mouth willingly. Abaddon kissed her, sending her essence deep within Meg. She kept her mouth against Meg’s when she’d drawn it back. Meg recognized this. Abaddon still tasted of rotten meat and the stink of flowers ready to shed all their petals.

Abaddon’s perfect red mouth was bruised and smudged when she pulled back. “I’ve got a new task for you,” she told Meg. “You’re going to like this one. You’re going to need a new body for it.”

Meg shrugged. She’d been in this one for long enough. Time to move on.

“She’s called Meg as well.” Abaddon grinned and her teeth looked white and even and razor sharp. “She’s pretty.”


End file.
